1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to remote client devices such as multimedia players, cell phones, and personal digital assistants. More specifically, the invention describes a method and apparatus for automatically updating user programmable input sensors (such as buttons) to perform any of a suite of user supplied functions.
2. Description of Related Art
Recent developments in consumer electronics have included the introduction of remote client devices that, due to their small size, have limited display capabilities. Such limited display remote client devices include portable multimedia asset players (such as MP3 players, minidisk players), cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and the like. Unfortunately, the very nature of the limited display capabilities of these (and other) devices, precludes the use of all but a simple graphical user interface having a very limited number of displayable icons for providing any of a number of useful control functions. Therefore, most of these devices rely upon a fixed set of control buttons in addition to any displayable input icons to provide a suitable user interface for control of the device.
For example, in the case of an MP3 player, a number of digitized audio files in the form of MP3 files are stored in a storage medium included in or coupled to the player in a fashion deemed most suitable to that user. In the case of MP3 files, for example, a user of the MP3 player must be able to conveniently interact with the player in order to peruse and select a particular file (or files) based upon such characteristics as music genre, author, album, or whatever grouping of MP3 files is present in the MP3 player. In addition to merely selecting a particular file, it would be of great convenience to the user to be able to perform additional control functions (such as next/previous song, increase/decrease volume, skip next album, etc.) using only those input icons as well as input buttons already available to the user.
Unfortunately, however, conventionally configured MP3 players (and other assorted limited display client devices) offer only a fixed set of control inputs that perform but a fixed set of control functions. For example, a typical MP3 player uses a particular input button to perform a scroll up function and another to perform a scroll down feature, whereas another button is used to scroll left and yet another to scroll right. In some cases, a toggle feature can limit the physical number of buttons required but the fact remains that the functions performed are fixed and immutable and therefore offer no ability to customize the suite of functions performed.
What is required is a method and apparatus that affords a user of a remote client device the ability to customize available user inputs to perform any of a suite of user supplied functions.